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[Simbabbad]

It's so weird that the OP takes Nintendo examples. Nintendo doesn't care at all about story: their worlds and stories are so abstract and flexible that they can do basically anything they want with them. Narration in those series are pure alibis, who really cares about continuity in Zelda, StarFox or Metroid, really?

Now, take something with a lot more story and narration like Dead Space, and yeah, here they really wrote themselves into a corner...

Nintendo has been particularly bad about this, the Metroid series is for all intents and purposes dead because they just are not interested in continuing after Fusion. Not to mention how badly they messed up the story by including Other M in the mix. Samus is an enemy of the galaxy now, and knows about two Metroid cloning programs. At least she has the adam AI now...

Other M is a prequel set before Fusion and is story-wise a near retelling of Fusion, so it literally doesn't change anything. And even as far as Fusion goes, the Federation will simply pretend it never happened, and go on giving missions to Samus if Nintendo wants it.

The only thing really complicating things is the new Fusion suit Samus acquires at the end of the game, and even that can easily be fixed by saying "she had surgery and all is back to normal" in a few seconds cutscene. Or they could go further the Metroid/Samus Fusion route and make it more interesting, a bit like in Metroid Corruption. I really don't see how they're in a dead end story-wise (now, as far as audience goes)...

 

[crazyrabbits]

I'd argue the ending of the original Thief trilogy is part of the reason (if not the only one) as to why the series was rebooted. Deadly Shadows ended with all Keeper Magic being destroyed, Garrett becoming RNG Keeper Jesus, Garrett's mentor dying (in a really ugly way), citizens finding out all the secrets of the Keepers and Garrett eventually becoming protege to a young girl.

It's no wonder why they rebooted it. I verily believe that the 2014 reboot was originally intended to be a straight sequel, but once the dev team tried to put it all into continuity, they realized they had made a huge mistake and made some kind of weird reboot/pseudo-sequel.

Spoiler

There's a 70-80 year time skip, 2014 Garrett is apparently not the same as the original Garrett (called Sneak Thief, who was arrested and put in prison for most of his life), Erin is presumably the same little girl aged-up, magic was apparently outlawed (wut?) and Karras/the Keepers are still namechecked in the game.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

But clearly you see the irony when that actual name is applied to a Fox and not a human. I'm just saying James should have thought harder about naming his Fox son Fox, even if Fox is technically a valid name. Fox's dad should just be named Fox is basically what I'm saying. Nintendo fucked up big time.

Well there are way tackier names IRL like Chastity, Hope, Faith, Liberty, etc. Maybe it's just something they do in the Star Fox world.

 

[JC Lately]

Personally, I thought the 'red' ending (both vanilla and Extended Cut) of ME3 had all kinds of storyline hooks. I'm just not sure how you would make a game out of any of them. Maybe a novel series, or an animated series, or even a limited comic book series.

 

[Mman235]

Crystal Dynamic's first Tomb Raider trilogy; at the end all of Lara's backstory is wrapped up (which by her own words is her main motivation for what she does), and it's established that basically all ancient cultures originated from the same source (do I need to go into the issues with this in an adventure series with a focus on mystery?)

While the reboot was obviously done to change up the game style for bigger mass appeal more than anything, it was also somewhat necessary in the first place, given they would have had to retcon half the shit in the last games anyway for further adventures to make sense.

 

[ashecitism]

But the twist though, it would be always the same thing. Like what this member is saying:

Bioshock wasn't the same as Infinite. The devs just pick a different setting, different political setup, different character. They don't have to concern themselves with the Elizabeth - Booker storyline. They are not constants.

 

[Wonko_C]

Nintendo would probably make Samus give birth to Metroids to have an excuse for a sequel to Fusion.

 

[Kinyou]

Dead Space

The last dlc has some flimsy excuse for

Spoiler

why the necromorphs are actually not all dead and then ends with earth getting attacked by several necromporph moons (yes, moons)
So the only way the series can really continue is by having huge battles against necromorphs, which is kind of the exact opposite of what people want.

I don't see how they could make a return to the survival horror of Dead Space 1 without retconning that stuff.

 

[JC Lately]

Nintendo would probably make Samus give birth to Metroids to have an excuse for a sequel to Fusion.

You bite your goddamn tongue. There's enough of that plot idea on fan fiction sites.

 

[Mivey]

It's writing into a corner because its finishing a story in a franchise that wasn't going to end. So when the next installment comes they have to write themselves out of the corner they wrote themselves into.

Those examples are like, the definition of writing a series into a corner. It requires forced reasoning or a reboot to continue.

Why couldn't they introduce a new threat with Halo 4? Doesn't even have to be about aliens, maybe some sort of civil war.

I do think you can have multiple stories in the same franchise, you simply start fresh once the trilogy is over. New people, new blood. Would work fine, I thínk.

Then again, I'm not really familiar with the deeper lore of the Halo games, so maybe there is a good reason they can't introduce new things? Like a "everything has happened before, everything will happen again" theme.

 

[Bl@de]

Resident Evil? Resident Evil.

We all know what they have to do know to top RE6. RE7 will go into space with roundhouse kicking zombies and hunters on the Moon (where Weskers secret twin brother runs an Umbrella Factory).

 

[Hockey123]

I would have to disagree about the Zelda series being written into a corner. I think that the Zelda franchise has plenty of creative freedom as each game (often) builds a new world. Skyward Sword, the latest console entry, probably has the strongest narrative in a Zelda game. I'd say that having a great atmosphere is more important to a Zelda game than story though.

Do people play the Zelda games worried about the overarching narrative?

Anyways I defenitly wouldn't say it's written into a corner as a new game can go pretty much wherever it wants, unlike say God of War which would need some serious work in order to continue Kratos' story.

 

[Apt101]

Mass Effect was needlessly written into a corner. The stars were the limit at the conclusion of 2. Why the writers navigated the route they did with 3 I don't understand.

 

[justgames7604]

sometimes i feel as though halo did.

 

[JimmyRustler]

I'd also go with RE. The story got so bloated and big, it's doomed to go the action route from here on in. But meanwhile (after the bad reception) they probably realized that this wasn't such a good idea and now they done goofed. Guess this is one of the reasons why they announced the RE2 remake instead of RE7.

 

[FHIZ]

I think Last of Us did, which is why I'm super hesitant on a sequel. Joel and Ellie's story was so good on a deeply personal level and where it was left was so perfectly ambiguous, to directly continue it would feel like a cheap cash in. But their story also had huge consequences for that world, and if Naughty Dog was to follow a different set of characters in that world and go "they're story means just as much in the grand scheme of things," then it just sort of feels cheap for both stories.

I'd like to be proven wrong, and I'll play the hell out of Last of Us 2, but there's also that part of me that just wants it to be left where it was.

 

[LeleSocho]

Mgs4 spoiler warning:


MGS4's story shenanigans are MGS4 fault only and had nothing to do with MGS2, MGS2 didn't force in any way 4's writing into explaining everything through "because nanomachines" or the fact that Ocelot was nine-crossing everyone until death nor that the world economy did go havok because of Emma's worm (that was actually a pretty good plot point).
After playing MGS4 and taking some things from it i could write a much better story than we actually got without going against what happened in MGS2.

 

[BadWolf]

I'd also go with RE. The story got so bloated and big, it's doomed to go the action route from here on in. But meanwhile (after the bad reception) they probably realized that this wasn't such a good idea and now they done goofed. Guess this is one of the reasons why they announced the RE2 remake instead of RE7.

Really don't think that has anything to do with that, notice how REmake 2 was announced out of the blue and not at some major event. It was also announced super early.

If anything Capcom is probably trying to get some good will from gamers with REmake 2, ala Square Enix has recently and Sega seems to be aiming to do.

 

[Easy_D]

Dead Space

The last dlc has some flimsy excuse for

Spoiler

why the necromorphs are actually not all dead and then ends with earth getting attacked by several necromporph moons (yes, moons)
So the only way the series can really continue is by having huge battles against necromorphs, which is kind of the exact opposite of what people want.

I don't see how they could make a return to the survival horror of Dead Space 1 without retconning that stuff.

Wouldn't even be mad if Dead Space 4 opened up with

Spoiler

you being some maintenance dude on an Mental Asylum space station and Isaac is just a patient there who you can find, rambling about giant moons or whatnot.

 

[Tuck]

Many will say the Ending of Mass Effect. But that was easily solved by ME: Andromeda.

...how?

 

[Lionel Richie]

Kojima clearly had no idea what to do with the Patriots after introducing them in MGS2. Then he took the worst idea and ran with it.

Yeah, but to be fair the whole issue here is Kojima having to follow up the massive 4th wall breaking mindfuckness that happened during MGS2 as if it actually happened for MGS4. Probably doesn't help that the plot gets more and more moronic during the series (MGS3 is very emotional, but the revelations at the end make the story so fit for Ebert's idiot plot).

 

[Zomba13]

He doesn't really have any reason to.

He didn't have any reason to kill 90% of the people/Gods he killed in his games so that doesn't matter.

 

[Boss Doggie]

I'd say Skyrim has put TES in some weird state where it's the damn apocalypse, but then this is Bethesda we're talking about. All shit can be avoided by making a hundred year timeskip or some shit.

Star Ocean 3. That infamous twist retroactively ruined 1 and 2 and ruined any future Star Ocean games going forward. 4 has a lot of its own horrible issues but they really should've just cut bait and started a new continuity after that.

Suikoden 3 wrote itself into a corner IMO. Every other Suikoden had to be a prequel because moving forward in that timeline could only be the final Suikoden.

How to spot someone who never got Star Ocean 3, the post. The fact that SO5 will embrace SO3 laughs at you. I'm debating whether I should explain the whole ordeal or not.

Also no, Suikoden 3 didn't write itself "to a corner". It's because the creator left after 3, he wanted to finish the story but because he left the games couldn't see itself finish the story set from S1. So there.

With Star Fox, they kinda ended it with Command, so they're rebooting the canon with Zero. With Metroid, I legitimately think they're lost.

Nope. Command isn't treated as canon. For Metroid all games seem to occur prior to Fusion.

Nintendo's the worst at this consistently I think. Star Fox and Metroid being the most prime examples of being series that wrote themselves into a situation where no one wants to tackle any sequels anymore from the events that have happened, so they're stuck in endless prequels and 'filling the gap' stories, if even that.

It's not so much as they wrote themselves in the corner, rather for some odd reason they're afraid to go forward on that.

I mean what's stopping them for making a game with Samus on the run from the feds? Or are people just damn stupid that they can't play a Metroid game without Ridley or some shit like that, or old recurring mooks?

I also don't get how it is hard not to follow up from Star Fox Assault. Hell if anything it makes a good premise - Star Fox is in ruins, it is time to rise like a phoenix.

For some odd reason people want the Mario effect on other Nintendo properties. Good lord imagine if every Fire Emblem game involved Marth.

It's so weird that the OP takes Nintendo examples. Nintendo doesn't care at all about story: their worlds and stories are so abstract and flexible that they can do basically anything they want with them. Narration in those series are pure alibis, who really cares about continuity in Zelda, StarFox or Metroid, really?

This post is not only ignorant, but also condescending!

Those games you mentioned actually aren't "abstract and flexible" considering that they actually follow a good narrative flow. It was only recently with Star Fox did they pull that shit out, and even Metroid is still good with Fusion. Hell plenty of Nintendo games have a concrete timeline (Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Kid Icarus, etc.), if anything it's only the platformers that have "abstract" stories.

So no, stop that bullshit.

 

[RealityCheque]

Assassins Creed has been utterly boxed in for years.

 

[Trickster]

Mass Effect.

From the very first game, I just had this feeling of "how the fuck are they gonna have us defeat these thing?"

And unsurprisingly, both ME2 and ME3 had no good answer. It was a very poor handling of a trilogy storyline

 

[Acrylic7]

Kingdom Hearts

 

[mcz117chief]

I don't understand what you're saying about ME unless you're just being flippant because you don't like the series.

I am saying that Mass Effect has no story besides "Big bad aliens, shoot them, galaxy explodes in three colours." the end. You can't really turn that into a bad ending if you don't have a good story to begin with.

 

[scrubpatrol]

The Batman Arkham series. Fantastic but Rocksteady, I think, deliberately puts any sequel out of the question. Something to be said for closing the narrative arc but man I really want another Arkham game. Another prequel?

 

[delSai]

The Batman Arkham series. Fantastic but Rocksteady, I think, deliberately puts any sequel out of the question. Something to be said for closing the narrative arc but man I really want another Arkham game. Another prequel?

It was the end of the Rocksteady "Trilogy". I bet there's more Arkham coming, i wouldnt be surprised if the rumored Suicide Squad would be a "Arkham" game.
And Batman probably isnt done yet, they'll just start a new trilogy or something like that. No way in hell WB just drops Batman, those games sell too good.

 

[EGM1966]

Most of them. With games often the developers/publishers want to keep going with anything successful. This immediately conflicts with the initial, more solid narrative, hence each instalment is more and more clearly delaying or trying to get out of the corner previous narrative has painted the franchise into.

 

[pizzacat]

Gears of War 3 and Halo 3 created these issues kind of. Both ended the 3rd instalment by either killing off the main series foe, or making them no longer at war.

It made it so you needed to write a forced reason for Covenant to still be an enemy in Halo 4, and who knows what the plot of Gears 4 will be.

Locust can still be alive at the end of 3,

Spoiler

death of the queen

= the locust being more and more savage

 

[CollectedDust]

I felt like Gears did with the ending of 3; but it seems writers will always find a way around it.

Edit: seems like this has already been mentioned.

 

[MrBadger]

Ace Attorney 5 dropping every plot arc from Apollo Justice, back tracking on Phoenix's retirement and introducing yet another rookie lawyer with a troubled past made me pretty much lose all interest in the continuity. Takumi's new (never to be localised) trilogy was needed for me.

 

[rhandino]

Kingdom Hearts... the story is a mess that was only amplified by the ending of Dream Drop Distance, which I found hilarious because that game managed also tries to make sense to all the crazyness.

Thank god they said that III is the end of Xehanort saga and that they will move on from that. Ugh

 

[jg4xchamp]

Mass Effect 3's ending is entirely a product of Bioware writing themselves into a corner.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

I will also say ahead of time some will name certain series, I will defend Resident Evil for a second. Resident Evil is maybe the longest on-going game narrative, it has more 'canon' material than any other video game franchise out there I think, it has over 15 canon games in an on-going story, canon CG films, outside material, etc. It's always been inspired by B-films and the narrative is dumb, but it's fun and though for a while it seemed it lost its way in Revelations 1 & RE6, the recent Revelations 2 actually wrapped together some plot threads nicely and was a good Resident Evil story that made even those entries feel more connected to everything else. I think how batshit insane the whole narrative is happens to be part of the series charm.

Resident Evil games can go on and on as long as there will be no end-of-the-world scenario. Each game is basically: a virus (or a parasite) was spread in place X and people are turning into monsters, escape from the place while killing the big bad responsible for this and destroying the place, hence the possibilities are endless. And let's not forget that there can be many side-stories happening in places that we already visited (Raccoon City incident was already covered in 6 games). RE5 made it even easier since it indicated that Umbrella's viruses are widespread on black market so any terrorist organization can use it (you don't need another unfortunate incident).

I'd also go with RE. The story got so bloated and big, it's doomed to go the action route from here on in. But meanwhile (after the bad reception) they probably realized that this wasn't such a good idea and now they done goofed. Guess this is one of the reasons why they announced the RE2 remake instead of RE7.

RE2 was announced since it's a big (?) and very uncertain project that needed hype to even start the production. RE7 does not need that. RE6 was announced for the first time with a trailer showcasing a huge chunk of the game already finished and mere 9 months before the game was released. No CGI concept trailer, teasers and such bullshit.

He doesn't really have any reason to.

The main god of the religion will kill his cat; or simply spill Kratos' milk. That's enough reason for Kratos to go on a killing spree.

 

[Madao]

I wouldn't worry about metriod being cornered. Federation Force will push forward the plot of that universe.

you do know the whole Prime series (mainline and spinoffs) all happen before Metroid 2, right?

FF is probably be located in that same period. nothing so far indicates that they have the slight desire to continue post Fusion.

 

[LeonSPBR]

Mass Effect 3's ending not only fucked the story that the series was leading up to until that point, but also screwed over any story that is going to follow it.

Yes, ME 3 ending was a mess. Can't return to the series anymore thanks to the ending.

 

[The Finest Brew]

Resident Evil, I'd say. With the events of RE5

Spoiler

(What with the big bad of the series just flat out being killed in a pretty definitive way)

, they somehow bullshitted their way into (Revelations 2 spoilers)

Spoiler

having a new antagonist that is literally female Wesker

, perhaps in an effort to reboot the series kinda? As much as I like Revelations 2, I don't see anywhere the story can go from there besides down.

Really, it needs a full reboot more than anything else.

Edit: And on that note, the FFXIII series. XIII ended pretty definitively. It had a clear beginning, middle, end. Sure, there were tropes involved with a few parts (particularly at the end), but those could be written off as laziness. Then XIII-2 tried to turn those tropes into something waaaaay unneeded. And by the end of Lightning Returns, everything that happened in the original XIII is essentially nullified. It would have been interesting if they had explored the idea of

Spoiler

the idea of the heroes effectively destroying everything they loved, due to feeling like their quest was 'right'. It could have been something special...but what we got was flat out nonsensical to a hilarious degree.

 

[BadWolf]

Resident Evil, I'd say. With the events of RE5

Spoiler

(What with the big bad of the series just flat out being killed in a pretty definitive way)

, they somehow bullshitted their way into (Revelations 2 spoilers)

Spoiler

having a new antagonist that is literally female Wesker

, perhaps in an effort to reboot the series kinda? As much as I like Revelations 2, I don't see anywhere the story can go from there besides down.

Really, it needs a full reboot more than anything else.

Like anyone ever played RE for the story.

 

[The Finest Brew]

Like anyone ever played RE for the story.

I guess I was one of the few people who found the dumb, hokey story to be fairly interesting then. xD

 

[Kenshin001]

Killzone when they nuked the whole Helghan planet in KZ3 which pretty much ended any interesting storylines that could have been explored there. They then jumped forward in time with a bunch of new, forgettable characters and a ridiculous premise of the Helghast and Vektans living on the same planet despite the Helghans still being space Nazis. I don't know what they were thinking.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

Resident Evil, I'd say. With the events of RE5

Spoiler

(What with the big bad of the series just flat out being killed in a pretty definitive way)

, they somehow bullshitted their way into (Revelations 2 spoilers)

Spoiler

having a new antagonist that is literally female Wesker

, perhaps in an effort to reboot the series kinda? As much as I like Revelations 2, I don't see anywhere the story can go from there besides down.

Really, it needs a full reboot more than anything else.

The big bad that was only relevant in like 3 main games (RE1, RECV, RE5) and was working in the background in one other game (RE4)? Yeah, I dunno how the series can work without him, especially since we already had at least 3 more main games since Wesker's death without him anywhere in the spotlight (

Spoiler

Well, there was Alex, but she could also be a completely separate character unrelated to him and the story would still work

).

 

[LastGamer84]

Locust can still be alive at the end of 3,

Spoiler

death of the queen

= the locust being more and more savage

Umm I'm pretty sure that

Spoiler

All the locust are dead considering the cutscene at the end of 3. Adam Fenix even mentions that the solution to the Lambent will kill all of the immulsion a and the Locust

Which is why I think Epic let MS have the franchise: they knew full well the story would require an epic ass-pull to continue. I'm staying far away from 4 for now.

 

[Screaming Meat]

Kojima never intended for the series to continue after MGS2. It was supposed to be his swan song. He practically writes each entry as if it were the last he'd ever make, but even when he went to make MGS3 it avoided having to answer the hard hitting questions since it was a prequel.

MGS3 actually did answer most of the questions from MGS2.

 

[The perfect Dark]

Bishock. That's the reason why the DL-episodes (Infinite) don't exist for me.

 

[Teuoxton]

Only problem I have is that this will make all the idiots and trolls who call Samus "Metroid" technically correct.

Well according to the manga which is apparently canon:

Spoiler

Old Bird raised Samus to be the Metroid, the Chozo word for Ultimate Warrior. Gray Voice had his own side project with Mother Brain to create the monsters we know as Metroids to combat the X. So two different Chozo factions chose to call their differing projects Metroid with a shared goal in mind.

 

[Sub_Level]

Mgs4 spoiler warning:


MGS4's story shenanigans are MGS4 fault only and had nothing to do with MGS2, MGS2 didn't force in any way 4's writing into explaining everything through "because nanomachines" or the fact that Ocelot was nine-crossing everyone until death nor that the world economy did go havok because of Emma's worm (that was actually a pretty good plot point).
After playing MGS4 and taking some things from it i could write a much better story than we actually got without going against what happened in MGS2.

Hear, hear!

Hell, MGS4 even ditches two core points of MGS2:

Spoiler

Ocelot being posessed by Liquid and Raiden's character development at the end of 2. He ends up going through the same proxy soldier existential crisis in 4 minus a game built around him.

 

[Rambler]

From my understanding by reading interviews and such, Other M was supposed to get Metroid out of said story corner.


I don't think that worked out.

In a weird way it did, because now people only care about Prime.

 

[BadWolf]

Hear, hear!

Hell, MGS4 even ditches two core points of MGS2:

Spoiler

Ocelot being posessed by Liquid and Raiden's character development at the end of 2. He ends up going through the same proxy soldier existential crisis in 4 minus a game built around him.

That Ocelot bit was just fan speculation. What was said in MGS4 about the Ocelot situation made more sense.

And about Raiden, something happened to him that caused him to lose everything below his upper jaw but now we will never know what. I blame Platinum Games.